Thanksgiving 2011

Thanksgiving!!!  A (basically) All-American Holiday!
U - S - A !!  U - S - A !!  U - S - A !!

As an architecture professional, I submit this card I made:

Happy ArchiTurkey Day!

....on to the next one

I religiously espouse the clever/funny play on words.

One could say...I pun-tificate.

Arnold Promised...I delivered!!

...though long after he (and/or the franchise) delivered.

What do you call a hilarious moment of irony?
A ROFL Iron!!!

You're welcome.

Continental Asians Who Hate Disney

In a pre-emptive action to keep a Middle Eastern-styled 'Jasmine Revolution' from taking hold in their country's enormous (quantitatively speaking) young populace, the overbearing censorship-happy authoritarian Chinese government is banning jasmine-related things.  They've already banned access to a video clip of their own President singing a Jasmine-themed (no relation to the Revolution) song.  Reports suggest that actual Jasmine Flowers are soon to be banned, with extreme members of the government suggesting a ban on production of the ubiquitous Jasmine Rice, and some even going so far as to call for a halt to Jasmine Tea production (lest their impressionable youths get drunk on the subtle flavor of the flowery flames of populist revolution).  I've even read that they have recalled and stopped the sale of all forms of Disney's Alladin, citing ther a stream of subtext throughout the film encouraging their kids to rise against the establishment and fight against all odds for the Jasmine [Revolution].

Folks, in this era of cloned sheep, genetically modified vegetables, Justin Beiber's hairdo, and other crimes against nature, this beast was bound to rear its head given time.  Finally, the world has birthed Asians who will not be flicking V-signs wearing Mickey Mouse shirts as they go through customs at LAX (a-la that scene from the adequate Tom Hanks movie  'The Terminal').

Perhaps the Chinese government should have been tipped off to the film's true message when the Mandarin-Language DVD release was postponed after Disney recalled this original cover.

Same Bat-Place, New Bat-Face

Welcome to 2011 and welcome to the new Pa(ren)thetic Life blog!!

For those of you who understood the reference of this post's title, I apologize the deliberate cheeky-ness.  For those who did not, learn some culture!  I may be four months or so early but my blog has been resurrected!  It has a new name (because my lovely beau insisted there was simply not enough HaHa to justify the blog's previous name) and corresponding title image, but the web address is still the same.  The direction of content will remain the same (since I was and still am the sole contributor) and hopefully touch on more varied subjects.  Though, it's been nearly a year since my last post so I'm just going to pick up where I left off. 

Seeing as its the tail end of the usual end-of-the-year Holiday Season, its time for my annual e-card via Photoshop:

This year, in addition to resolving to eat better and exercise more frequently (those resolutions could only be more untimely if made while eating pumpkin pie at the end of Thanksgiving Dinner), I also intend to post to my blog more regularly.


Happy 2011!!!  I'll be back here again soon.

Better Late Than Never?

Yikes! It's been about 3 weeks since my last post, so this might be about a week late.  Oops!  Life just happenned and got in the way of me and my laptop reaching into the blogo-verse.  Lets get on to the post.

The Christmas Season of 2007 was my first in DC and I wanted to make a Holiday Card that included an unmistakable reference to this nation's fabulous capital.  At the time, I was working alot of hours and kind of wound up doing a bit of a rush-job.  I pulled a picture of the Lincoln Memorial I had taken and a picture of me my mother had taken and slapped them together.  I did a quick drop of text and sent the thing out before I got on a plane to fly home for the holidays.  The next day, I'm on the phone with my girlfriend and she said, "did you misspell 'Christmas' on purpose?  Like, as a funny thing in the card?"  Freaking out, I opened the file and saw that I did, indeed, misspell 'Christmas'.  The thing is, I'm not the best of typists and I'm of the generation that grew up having MS Word automatically point out or correct our typing errors.  It was just a little unfortunate that my quirk manifested itself on one of my Holiday Cards.  But I decided it wouldn't really be a card from me unless it had something like a poorly typed word to really pass along a part of my personality.  Fun!

For the Holidays of 2009, I stepped up the DC-ness a bit and I stepped up the Leo-ness too.  Also I tried to incorporate Christmas and New Years festivities to make it a more general holiday card.  Though the colorization on the Santa sleigh wasn't exaclty to my liking (and still drives me bit coo-coo), I think the overall card was a success.

Which brings us to this past Holiday Season's card (though we're still liturgically in the season until tomorrow - Jan 6).  I took the original idea behind my Cards - mimicking families sending yearly cards - and kind of molded it to the way I live.  When I left my childhood home in Texas, one of the things my mother sent me off with was this flat-profile, roll-out, wall-hanging, cloth christmas tree (pictured here).

And that's me posing with it the night I put up my lights.  My mom has a tree just like it that she puts up at home, only she has more flat ornaments than I do.  Anyway, alot of family holiday cards people send out have a photo with them in front of their household Christmas Tree, so I adapted that concept to me.

So Happy New Years, Blog!!!  Welcome to 2010.  From Me, me, ME, and mE.

Next blog is about NPR and music.  How could that combination ever disappoint?

2006-2007 Holidays...When It All Started

During the Holiday Season of 2006, I realized it was the first one where I was in some sort of a household, apart from the one my parents created.  It was my 5th year of college (I was in a 5 year professional program, the 5th year was a requirement not a choice) and I was living in an apartment off-campus with one of my best friends, Zach.  the holiday season had come upon us and I was feeling the good cheer.  Though I was still preoccupied with finals and papers, I managed to stay in the season.

It was the first time I bought and decorated a (fake) Christmas Tree for a place I lived in.  It came out so well!

As Christmas neared, I realized that people were sending Christmas cards left, right, and center.  Since Zach and I were technically out in the world on our own, I decided that we too should have a Christmas card to send out.  So, with my fabulous Photoshop-ing skills, I modified a picture my roomie and I took that Halloween (we were Turk and J.D. from Scrubs), found a cheezy lookinng background somewhere on the internets, and tossed on some text.

The card was so much fun to make and it was received so warmly, I decided that I should do one every year.  This was just the first, but I've yet to do my best.

07-08 and 08-09 retrospectives are still coming, building up to the unveiling of this year's card!